


Speed of Sound

by PenelopeGrace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Backstory, F/M, So yes, and i can't believe i'm writing this, but Eileen is an awesome character and totally deserves one, that sort of thing yes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5899573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeGrace/pseuds/PenelopeGrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Eileen Leahy starts here. We dive into the early years of her life and follow up to what leads her to the events of Supernatural's 11.11 "Into the Mystic." Possibly long fic. There may be eventual Sam x Eileen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Begin

Eileen Leahy lives in a world without sound. 

The silence is all she knows, but in her dreams, she can distantly remember something from the days with sound. An unknown supernatural creature took away her parents and her hearing when she was just a young baby of about five, six months old. She can’t remember their deaths nor her parents’ killer. 

It’s not a mercy. It’s not a gift from above. 

She wants to know—to remember, to never forget—who has killed them. But she can’t. She can’t recall a single thing. She was too young. Lillian O'Grady—the hunter who accidentally found Eileen crying in her crib—says that it’s probably for the best, but she doesn’t think so. Because she doesn’t know, Lillian is grasping at straws to pinpoint which supernatural creature killed Eileen’s parents. And who knows? Maybe, that thing is going to kill more people. 

And leave survivors like Eileen. 

***

Lillian O'Grady is the first person who has ever cared for Eileen—or at least, that is what she knows thanks to her memories. Not her biological mother. Not her biological father. Lillian. The woman with red hair, a smoker’s voice, and a cigarette in her fingers whenever she’s downright nervous. 

Eileen’s adoptive mother confirms Eileen’s hearing disability shorty after she found her. Eileen can’t follow noise, and she can’t seem to sense much of the world by sound. The doctors confirms it for sure when Eileen is five years old, but they all know she’s deaf with no residual hearing. Lillian drags Eileen from doctor to doctor, always trying to discover all the information about Eileen’s disability.   
Eileen herself can clearly remember how the doctor—hearing specialist, to be much more specific—would put headphones on and then press some buttons out of the corner of Eileen’s eyes. Eileen can always tell when the specialist push the buttons, but she can’t quite figure out what should trigger her fingers. 

“Some sound,” signs Lillian, speaking too. 

Eileen holds onto the button, but she never pushes it. 

The hearing specialist, shaking her head, moves her mouth, but Eileen doesn’t know what she’s saying. Too young to understand so many words, she can make out a few sentences here and there and she wishes—so wishes—that the doctor would use sign language. It’s as if she is being purposely left out of the conversation. The odd man out of the trio. The strange one. The outsider.

Later, when Lillian brings Eileen back to the cozy yellow-white house with flaky paint flecks falling from the walls in San Francisco, Lillian tells the full story. The doctor diagnose her condition as “complete hearing loss.” There’s no chance to get it back. 

No cure. No solution.

Eileen isn’t quite sure what to make of that. A world lacking of sound is what she knows, and regaining the ability to hear might push her off her orbit. 

She sits on the edge of her bed, facing against the wall. She picks up a picture book and begins to read, her mouth moving along and mimicking the way her speech therapist talks. She isn’t quite sure if she is indeed enunciating the words, but she can tell that something is coming out. Audible words? She doesn’t know. 

The hair on the back of her neck rises, and she immediately stiffens. 

Lillian gently places a hand on her shoulder and signs, Are you going to bed, Eileen?

Practicing her voice, Eileen whispers, “Yes.” Then after watching Lillian close the door behind her, she climbs in, checks her gun, and then falls asleep. 

Time passes by, and she gets her first hearing aid at six. That is at the same time Lillian has taught her how to slay ghosts with a salt gun and to handle a match properly. She is always left purposely out on these “cases,” but her adoptive mother makes sure she knows what to do in case of emergency. Since the beginning of her life, Eileen has slept with a gun under her pillow, knife and book about vampires on her night stand, a lighter in her emergency bag of clothes, and a jar of salt underneath her bed. She knows how to make an emergency EMT out of worthless trash, and she can load a gun without looking. 

But she can’t hear. It’s a disadvantage. 

When she is six years old, Lillian takes her to see another hearing specialist. A male doctor, this time. She goes through the entire process again, and they put headphones over her ear, give her a button to push, and then turn to Lillian to talk about something. She can’t quite read his lips correctly thanks to the flickering overhead light that needs to be fixed. She is sure that the doctor isn’t talking about some kind of gardening moss. 

She sighs a little. She hates whenever she misreads lips. 

When they get back home, Eileen has two pairs of hearing aids. She puts one set on and turns them on high. Nothing. But she can feel something, a sort of mild vibration coming from the aids. 

She stomps her foot on the wood floors. 

The vibrations are stronger, alerting her in that direction. Downwards. 

For the first time since visiting that doctor, she smiles. 

Sitting on the twin bed in the middle of her room on the second floor, she gaze out of the window and stare at the neighbor’s house. Picket fences, thriving green lawn, and shiny cars. 

Normalcy. She isn’t sure what she would do to have a day with sound and without supernatural elements. It would be… strange. Like a fish out of water. But she wouldn’t be an outsider anymore if she has her hearing back. 

Her nerves suddenly pick up a sort of vibration. In her right ear. Left, less so. She turns her head towards where the vibration is the strongest, and at the open doorway, Lillian stares at her with palpable but also pleasant surprise. With her hands shaking, she signs and asks, “How do you feel?” 

From the way her hearing aid pulses, it’s picking up Lillian’s words. 

She signs back, My ear can feel the aids.

Lillian smiles slightly and raises her hands again. “That’s good. You should go to bed, Eileen. It is almost nine o’clock.” 

Eileen nods. She takes her hearing aids out, turns off the light, and stares at the ceiling. Without the telltale tremors in her ears, she can’t tell if there is any sound in her room. 

But she has not forgotten about sound. In her dreams, she can hear screaming. 

She doesn’t know who is screaming. She has a feeling that it is her parents, and maybe it is a sweet gift that she doesn’t remember everything.


	2. Attend

She can’t avoid elementary school forever. When she is seven years old, Lillian registers her for the local elementary school in the middle of the school year. The school administrator tests Eileen in math, reading, and writing, and the school nurse even takes a quick look as if Eileen is a fascinating specimen to be studied. They place her with the rest of the first graders, and the teacher—Miss Anderson—introduces her to the rest of the class. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Eileen doesn’t know what Miss Anderson says. She talks so fast and quick, like lightning flashing across the sky. Once there, now gone. Her wild, untamed blonde hair obscures her mouth, but her fingers and arms move to empathize whatever words she is saying. Eileen, standing at the front of the class, fidgets with her scratchy sweater, and she looks above the heads of her classmates. 

She has never seen so many kids in one place. 

Miss Anderson leads her to an empty desk at the end of the classroom, and she is more than relieved to no longer feel the eyes boring at her back. Instead, she meets them all. Eye to eye. She tries for a gentle smile, but it ends up more of a pained wince. 

“Class,” says Miss Anderson, her mouth a bit more visible. She blows her blond hair to the side. “Class, please give Eileen a very warm welcome.” Her lips are noticeably slower, as if she is deliberately talking at a snail’s pace. Or talking to an idiot. 

Eileen shifts in her seat. She doesn’t quite like Miss Anderson. 

She reaches into her jeans and pulls out a silver lighter from her pocket. Flipping its cap on and off over and over again, she finds her nerves steadily relaxing. She watches Miss Anderson talk about something—this or that—and tries to read her mouth. It takes a lot of concentration and memorization, but she begins to see a pattern in the way she speaks. She rolls her rs and spits her ps. 

And school does get easier. A little easier. 

At recess, Miss Anderson lets the entire class of twenty-seven kids out. Like hungry little vampires, they rush towards the playground and join the rest of the first graders. Eileen, with her right hand gripping the lighter, slowly makes her way to the swings. She sits down, alone.

Just an observer. 

But that changes. 

A dark-skinned girl in a pink polyester jacket walks up with a clipboard in her hand. She scribbles something down, and she proceeds to raise it in front of Eileen. 

HI, EILEEN. I AM KIMI. 

Awkwardly, Eileen speaks, “Hi, Kimi.” She can feel sound coming out from her throat, but she can never tell whether or not it comes out clear. Is all of the syllables correct? Is she putting her tongue in the right place? Her speech therapist, Joy, can only guide Eileen so much. 

Eileen can’t hear, after all. 

Kimi smiles and waves with a pencil in her hand. She frantically erases the messy letters and words and begins to write again. 

Eileen waits. 

Then Kimi shows her the clipboard again. 

CAN U TEAH ME HOW TO SEGN?

It takes Eileen a few seconds to understand what Kimi is really saying. 

Can you teach me how to sign? 

Eileen nods. “Yes.” And she even raises her fist in front of her and make it nod—as if her fist is a head nodding to a question. She tilts her head towards her right hand. “That is how to say yes.” 

Kimi copies her. “Like this?”

“Yes.” 

And that is the first friend Eileen has ever made. 

***

“You can read lips?” says Kimi. 

The two girls sit in the sandbox. Eileen herself uses her fingers to dig a little hole in front of her. She can’t help but note the dried wood Kimi uses to poke at a dead beetle. It would be perfect for kindling, but she doesn’t dare to voice that aloud. 

Lillian has already warned her to never talk of the supernatural to anyone. Not even her teacher or classmates or neighbors. “It is better if they never know about it,” she said, signing awkwardly as she tries to pick the right words to use. “They will think you are insane.” 

“Some,” answers Eileen, signing. She makes sure Kimi knows how to say “some” with her hands. She is getting good at understanding ASL, and she is great at picking up little phrases here and there.   
Kimi digs into the soft dirt and palms at the silver-ish clay in the deep, deep hole. “Can you read what I’m saying?”

Eileen replies, “I can see some words.”

“Cool!” exclaims Kimi, glowing positively. “My aunt is deaf, and she always makes me write down what I’m saying. She never bothered to learn how to lip read, according to my ma. She’s a bit lazy. She makes me do the dishes! And ma calls her fat cow. My aunt is my ma’s younger sister.” Kimi babbles on, looking downwards.

Eileen, with a turning and rolling stomach, hesitantly touches Kimi’s chin and voices, “I can’t see your lips or throat, Kimi.”

“Oh.” Kimi blushes. “Sorry. I’ll try to talk to you directly. Ma tells me that I’m terrible. Slouching all the time. Not looking like a lady.”

“Move your lips clearly,” suggests Eileen. “Look at me.”

Quite thoughtfully, the new friend of Eileen grins. “I’ll try to!” 

“Girls!” shouts the supervisor in a neon jacket. The supervisor is there to make sure none of the kids accidentally wander off somewhere or about. There are five of them, and Eileen—out of the corner of her eye—tracks them. 

Eileen stares at the supervisor, her palms sweaty. 

“That hole is too deep. Fill it up again,” orders the supervisor.

Quickly, the two girls begin to push the dirt back in. They work together in unison, but Eileen doesn’t miss the flawed wink Kimi gives her. It looks a bit more like a squint, but she tries and Eileen can’t miss that genuine look Kimi gives her. 

A friend. 

It’s an odd thing, muses Eileen. 

But it feels nice. Someone who cares. Someone who is of her age. It’s nice that Kimi isn’t Lillian, Eileen’s speech therapist, or Eileen’s hearing specialist. Someone who is a peer. Someone whose problems she can pay attention to for once. Someone else’s life. 

It’s different. But she can get used to this. 

***

“How was your day today?” asks Lillian, driving home from school. She looks into the mirror and stops at the sign. “Do you like it so far?”

Playing with the shiny lighter, Eileen murmurs, “Yes. I do.” 

Turning the wheel, she pulls into the driveway and shakes her keys. Opening the doors for her foster daughter, Lillian says, “Oh, I will be gone for the night. Lock the doors and make sure the house is secure. I will be back before five in the morning.”

Eileen signs, What are you hunting?

A ghost, signs Lillian back. She quickly opens her mouth and shows off her teeth, growling. She looks more like a vampire than an actual ghost, but it makes Eileen smile. Then she gives a good laugh and pats Eileen on the back. “Go home, Eileen. Dinner is on the stove. Just heat it up and eat it. Don’t forget your table manners!” 

“Okay, Lillian.” 

“Eileen, call me mother.” 

Eileen shakes her head. “Lillian.”

Lillian sighs. “Alright, Eileen. Get inside of the house. Go!” 

And Eileen runs home, jumping onto the front porch. She watches Lillian drive out of the driveway, turn left on 4th street, and disappear out of her sight. Pulling out her home keys from her little pink backpack, Eileen opens up the doors, puts her hearing aids on high, and then reaches into her pocket for that handy lighter. She grabs the iron poker from the mess of umbrellas and shoes by the door and quietly begin to make her patrols. She searches every single room, including the attic. 

No one. But it isn’t too surprising. 

She checks the symbols hidden underneath the carpets of the living room and finds them all intact. Not surprising. Lillian always gives it a fresh coat every two weeks or so. Eileen goes to the leather couch and buries her hand between the cushions, searching. She finds the silver gun she has been looking for and then sits down. 

She breathes in slowly. Ghosts. 

Not a terrible thing to hunt. But unlikely to go after her. They typically don’t travel all the way here, but it isn’t a bad idea to salt the doors and windows.

She exhales. 

More work to do. But that is what she has to do. 

It would be nice to be normal. 

Just for a day. With actual hearing and no judging stares from other kids. Maybe she could be just like the other kids. Normal without any problems. Normal without the supernatural. Normal without a hearing disability. 

She shakes away her thoughts and goes to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read. Review.

**Author's Note:**

> So what do you guys think? Please leave your comments. Thanks!


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